Potting Soil Recipes

Save money and grow healthy plants by making a potting soil mixture yourself. Read the Gardenerdy article for easy-to-follow recipes, and make them in batches to be used at your convenience.

Gardenerdy Staff

Recipe #1: Organic Mix

This is an organic soil based mix that yields heavy soil than other peat mixes and has better drainage. To reduce root diseases, compost is known to encourage healthier soil mix. You can use perlite instead of sand, and add the fertilizer at the base.

Ingredients

⅓ screened mature compost

⅓ sharp sand

⅓ garden topsoil

Recipe #2: Orchid Mix

You can add this mix to most of the orchids like phalaenopsis and oncidium. Although it's a very good idea to repot orchids every one or two years as it improves the health of the plants, and helps them bloom.

Ingredients

6 parts fir bark

1 part peat moss

1 part medium grade charcoal

Recipe #3: Organic Substitute Mix

This next recipe's formula was concocted by the Farm and Garden Project from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Ingredients

10 lbs bone meal

5 lbs blood meal

5 lbs ground limestone

½ cubic yard sphagnum peat

½ cubic yard vermiculite

Recipe #4: Prick-out Mix

This recipe is used when you are planting seeds, and then transferring them into the ground when the plant reaches its transplant size.

Ingredients

2 parts sand

2 parts aged manure

2 parts leaf mold

6 parts compost

3 parts soil

1 part pre-wet and sifted peat moss

1 6 inch pot bone meal

Recipe #5: Tipi Produce Mix

All plant material that comes into any gardens, nursery, or greenhouses can be grown in this mix. This next recipe works well for small and medium plug trays, and can grow 1020 flats of peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, cucumbers, and many flowers. You can also fertilize them two times in a week with fish and seaweed fertilizer, which is dissoluble.

Ingredients

4 cubic ft. bales sphagnum peat moss

1 bag coarse vermiculite

1 bag coarse perlite

5 parts dolomitic limestone

10 parts kelp meal

10 parts blood meal

15 parts steamed bone meal

Recipe #6: Shade Mix

To grow plants in the shade, follow the recipe to yield an ideal soil. Cover both the humus and soil to wipe out roots, clods, and formation of large rocks.

Ingredients

1 part humus (compost)

2 parts loamy soil

1 part sand

Recipe #7: Cacti Mix

To plant a Christmas, orchid, and any epiphytic cactus plant, take a look at this simple formula.

Ingredients

3 parts organic potting mix

1 part sand

1 part perlite

Preparing these recipes at home is always better than buying it from the store and risking if it will work or not. Always select top quality ingredients to make the soil yourself, and let your garden prosper. The only difference between a store-bought kind and the homemade mix is your blossoming garden.